Benzinga | Jan 11, 2021 05:52AM EST

Bionano Genomics Announced on Sunday, The Kick-Off of its Next-Generation Cytogenomics Symposium, The Largest Event Yet to Showcase Saphyr's Utility in Genome Analysis for Genetic Disease and Cancer

Bionano Genomics, Inc. (NASDAQ:BNGO) announced Sunday the kick-off its 5-day Next-Generation Cytogenomics Symposium, which starts Monday January 11 and will feature 33 presentations by distinguished Saphyr users from leading hospitals and medical research institutions around the world. The presentations will cover applications of optical genome mapping (OGM) with Saphyr to analyze the genomes of patients with a variety of genetic diseases, blood cancers, solid tumors and repeat disorders as well as the studies supporting validation of clinical assays developed by Saphyr users. The last day of the symposium is dedicated to the study of the genomes of severely ill COVID-19 patients. The event is being held virtually and concludes on January 15, 2021.

Alka Chaubey, FACMG, PhD, Chief Medical Officer of Bionano Genomics commented: "I joined Bionano Genomics in August of 2020 because I believed that Saphyr was finally ready to transform the way genomes are analyzed in cancer and genetic disease. I quickly realized that the research and clinical communities were not sufficiently aware of Saphyr's capabilities as an informative tool for detecting structural variants of clinical significance. We created this symposium as part of our efforts to change that. I believe this event will be a turning point for Bionano Genomics as we demonstrate the remarkable capabilities of OGM with Saphyr and how it has the potential to become a standard platform in the pathologist's and researcher's armamentarium."

Erik Holmlin, PhD, CEO of Bionano Genomics commented: "Over the last year we've made tremendous progress in advancing the capabilities of Saphyr to detect the various classes of large genomic variants that are relevant in cancer and genetic disease with high throughput and low cost in a simple workflow. Important recent data will be presented at our symposium, which we believe demonstrates that Saphyr can detect all clinically reported structural variants identified by traditional cytogenetic methods, which short-read or long-read sequencing technologies have not been able to do. In addition to its equivalency to the methods that are standard of care, presenters will illustrate how OGM with Saphyr finds additional variants missed by the traditional methods, which has led to diagnosing more patients and an increase in diagnostic yield. We are excited to show the global community how Saphyr enables next-generation cytogenomics."

Each session will last about 2.5 hours and start at 7 am PST. After the scientific presentations, the speakers will join for a live panel discussion and Q&A moderated by Bionano's Chief Medical Officer Alka Chaubey. After conclusion of the live event, the recordings will be made available for on-demand viewing.

Monday, January 11: Constitutional Cytogenetics

This session starts with a presentation on the clinical validation studies of Saphyr compared to the standard of care cytogenetics for constitutional genetic disease and prenatal testing. Additional speakers show how Saphyr can find pathogenic variants undetected by traditional methods for a variety of genetic diseases and disorders of sex development.

Tuesday, January 12: Heme Malignancy

Eight speakers from around the world will present results from their studies comparing Saphyr with the cytogenetic standard of care for genome analysis of a variety of heme malignancies including MDS, adult and pediatric B-ALL, and CLL leukemias, ending with the presentation of results from a large national multi-center evaluation on Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

Wednesday, January 13: Solid Tumor

In this session, speakers will discuss their analysis of solid tumor genome structure in head and neck cancer, non-inflammatory and inflammatory breast cancer, liver cancer, uveal melanoma, ending with an update on the development of a cancer LDT with Saphyr.

Thursday, January 14: Complex Molecular Diagnostics

This session returns to genetic diseases with a focus on repeat expansions and contractions and other complex molecular mechanisms. Hear how Saphyr's ultra-long DNA molecule imaging can measure repeat contractions causing FSHD, repeat expansions causing spinocerebellar ataxia and familial adult myoclonic epilepsy, and can potentially solve other genetic mysteries.

Friday, January 15: Covid-19 Host Genome SV Expert Panel Session

Key members of the COVID-19 Host Genome SV Consortium will present how they are using Saphyr and other genomics technologies to detect structural variants in the human genome that can predispose to mild or severe COVID-19 disease. Speakers will present on their study of 37 critically ill, ICU-admitted patients, on children with MIS-C, on comparative genomics of SARS-CoV-2 infection susceptible animals and people, and more.

The full schedule of speakers and registration access is available at http://bit.ly/3pLPT28